His Most Secret Secret
by Moonlight Phoenix1
Summary: Draco Malfoy has a secret. A secret that no one is supposed to know or else his status at school will be ruined. And if his father finds out . . . Draco would become a disgrace to the family name – he might even become disowned. For Draco is dyslexic.


A/N: Hiyaz everyone! I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK from Russia and WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE it's GOOD to be HOME!!!  
  
Ahem.  
  
OK, OK, I know that all you fans (can I use that word? Or does it make me sound too full of myself?) of my other stories will simply HATE me for starting another story when I have sooooooo many unfinished ones . . . but, really, in your review, BLAME KLYPTO! NOT ME! Ahem. But I am posting this because I don't want anyone else to post something like this (if they get this idea like I did) first.  
  
Anyway, this is an idea that would NOT leave my head, since I can't recall ever reading a story in which Draco has to struggle hiding his dyslexia. Oh yeah, and I'm pissed off at ff.net. For the full story, go to my profile page and the read the bit I added on 16/08/03.  
  
Summary: Draco Malfoy has a secret. A secret that no one is supposed to know or else his status at school will be ruined. And if his father finds out . . . Draco would become a disgrace to the family name - he might even become disowned. For Draco's big secret is . . . Draco is dyslexic.  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing apart from the plot. Nothing. All the characters and things belong to the Lucky Bugger (also known as JK Rowling). Contains some OOTP spoilers. I also would like to say that no offence is meant to dyslexic people in this story - they are NOT thick. Draco only calls himself thick because he THINKS that he is. This is all about HIS thoughts and emotions - not mine.  
  
PS: ME LOVE FEEDBACK!  
  
WARNINGS: Swearing. SLASH. Possible suicidal thoughts. SLASH. Slight insanity (on my part). SLASH SLASH SLASH and more SLASH.  
  
~~~~~~~~ His Most Secret Secret ~~~~~~~~  
  
Chapter 1 - Never Find Out  
  
Did he know?  
  
No, no, he couldn't, he couldn't know . . . he had hid it too well. But there was something in his eyes that-  
  
No. Draco, get a hold of yourself. Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know, Draco Malfoy reminded himself as he boarded the train set for his last year at Hogwarts, the image of his father's scrutinizing gaze, almost as if he had been trying to size Draco up, still in his mind . . . but he didn't know. Nobody knew.  
  
Draco let out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding as he entered the closest compartment to the entrance on the train. Luckily it was empty, and Draco walked over to the seat by the window, steadying himself when the room began to blur slightly in his left eye. He sat sat himself down on the seat heavily, dropping his trunk onto the floor.  
  
God, he was tired. He had tired himself out all summer by worrying that his father would (one way or another) find out about his . . . problem.  
  
Draco couldn't write.  
  
Draco couldn't read.  
  
Draco couldn't spell.  
  
Draco had dyslexia.  
  
The reason that he did so badly on his OWLs (he only got two Acceptable's - the rest were Unmarkable's) was because of his problem. He couldn't understand --anything--. He tried, believe you me, he tried as hard as he could. In fact, the week before his OWLs he had stayed up every night, missing out on a lot of sleep, trying to teach himself how to read and write. But all to no avail. The two As that he got were only because he guessed everything.  
  
Dyslexia could do that to you.  
  
He could read some stuff, sure, but he couldn't exactly write a foot-long essay on why Goblin Rebellions Helped Shape Our World Into What It Is Today using the words, 'the', 'a' and 'cat' (although they weren't the --only-- words he knew, thank Merlin).  
  
But how does he do his homework throughout the entire year if he can't read or write, I hear you ask. Well, since it's homework, all Draco has to do is say a handy little charm (kind of like a Quick-Notes Quill), which enables his quill to right down everything he says - spelled correctly, of course. If he needs any help reading library books, then he uses another handy little spell which makes the book read out whatever page Draco chooses from it by itself.  
  
But during exams . . . using those spells would be impossible. Number one, no one is allowed to speak. Number two, people would find out about his problem. Number three, Dumbledore would try to send him to St Mungo's or something, and his father would completely freak.  
  
The summer after he did his OWLs was absolutely God-awful.  
  
When his father had received the results, he had completely blown his top. He started yelling at Draco, calling him a disgrace, telling him that if this what he'd come home to after being let off an Azkaban life-sentence (he had smooth-talked his way out of it), he'd have been better off in Azkaban anyway. He yelled at Draco that he was feeling completely humiliated, that Draco didn't deserve to be a Malfoy, that Draco better shape up or else he'd get the shit beaten out of him.  
  
Not that Lucius Malfoy ever hit his kid, no.  
  
The man can barely touch me, yet hit me? I don't think so, Draco remembered thinking bitterly that day.  
  
But that evening . . . when Lucius had come home from getting drunk at some rich pub near Hogsmeade . . . that night was absolutely terrifying.  
  
And Draco wished that he hadn't thought that thought earlier that day.  
  
For when Lucius was drunk and he got mad . . . he got very mad. Very, -- very-- mad.  
  
That evening, when he had come home, Draco had been upstairs in his room. Lucius had demanded his wife tell him what Draco had received for his OWLs, since he had forgotten (he always forgot things when he was drunk). Draco could hear his mother stutter that he got two OWLs.  
  
Why couldn't she have lied? He thought resentfully.  
  
There had been a terrible silence downstairs. Then slow, heavy thumps up the stairs to Draco's room. Draco literally froze when he heard his father's footsteps coming up the stairs.  
  
"Is it true?" his father yelled, kicking the door open. Draco remembered that his father looked absolutely livid - eyes bloodshot, long hair a mess, and an expression of pure rage on his face. "Did you only get two fucking OWLs?" the man yelled.  
  
Draco couldn't speak for fear.  
  
"Well? ANSWER ME!" Lucius demanded.  
  
"Y-yes," Draco stuttered, eyes wide with fear.  
  
Lucius's right eye twitched.  
  
Draco thought that maybe his father would just yell at him really loudly some more.  
  
But he thought wrong.  
  
Instead of yelling, his father walked over to Draco, who was sitting on his bed, pulled him up by his hair, and shoved him into a wall, where Draco hit his head, cracking the wood on his wall. He cried out in pain, and turned towards his father, who punched him across the mouth.  
  
"YOU INSOLENT LITTLE SHIT!" he yelled, "I DIDN'T SEND YOU TO HOGWARTS SO THAT YOU COULD HUMILIATE ME WITH TWO PATHETIC OWLs!"  
  
He hit Draco across the face, again and again. He kicked his son in the ribs, and Draco fell to the floor, bleeding from the mouth.  
  
"Father, please . . . you're drunk . . . don't be mad at me," Draco tried to calm his father down, whispering softly, desperately, in pain.  
  
"DON'T BE MAD AT YOU? HOW CAN I NOT BE MAD?! YOU'RE AN UNGRATEFUL BASTARD WHO SHOULD BE PUNISHED!" his father screamed, grabbing a muggle bed-side lamp that Draco had.  
  
Draco's eyes widened as he realised what his father was going to do.  
  
Lucius slammed the lamp against Draco's face.  
  
The next day Draco woke up on the floor, bits of the lamp lying around him. It had exploded on being slammed against the boy's face while still being lit up.  
  
And unlucky for Draco, there had been some of the light bulb smashed into his left eye.  
  
So in the morning, when he woke up . . . he started crying. And he hadn't cried ever since he was ten. But now he was crying. Wailing, even. The pain in his left eye was too much . . . too, too much . . . He cried with loud, choking sobs, which called his father (with a really bad hangover) into his room after ten solid minutes.  
  
"What are you crying for, you little brat?" his father snapped.  
  
But when Draco opened his eyes, Lucius' own eyes widened and he almost gasped.  
  
There was blood slowly dripping down Draco's cheek, out of his left eye.  
  
"Shit!" Lucius cursed. "Minnie! Minnie!" Nothing happened. "MINNIE!" Lucius yelled. Still nothing. "WHERE IS THAT BLOODY ELF?"  
  
After a few seconds, a small blue house-elf with a First-Aid bag appeared.  
  
"Yes Master, what is it?" the female house-elf squeaked.  
  
"You're not Minnie!" Lucius growled.  
  
The house-elf shook her head.  
  
"No sir, you ordered her killed the day before yesterday, sir. I am Krystal," she said. "What's wrong?" she asked.  
  
"Him!" Lucius snarled, pointing at his son, who was still crying.  
  
"Oh my!" the house-elf squealed, opening her bag straight away and taking out all sorts of different instruments. "Please may you leave, sir, I need absolute concentration for this!" Krystal requested nervously. Lucius (who was breathing quite raggedly) scowled at her, but left, muttering, "I have other places to be, anyway."  
  
Minnie leapt over to Draco, and immediately began checking his eye. She used all sorts of different instruments to try and stop . . . whatever was happening to his eye.  
  
After half an hour of pure torture for Draco (who had stopped crying a while ago), she stopped her ministrations.  
  
"You will be OK, Master Draco. It is lucky that your father has called me right away otherwise you might have lost your eyesight in your left eye!" Krystal said cheerfully. Draco nodded slowly. He thought that he was going to die because of the pain . . . not mention that he had a pounding headache and his mouth hurt. "Only, Master Draco . . . your eye . . . it . . . Krystal couldn't make it completely fine, but Krystal was doing her best!" Krystal said in her squeaky voice nervously.  
  
Draco froze. What was wrong with his eye? He could see alright, yes, and it was a little blurry, but . . .  
  
He slowly got up and made his way to the bathroom. He looked into the mirror.  
  
His right eye was fine, it was still the same silver-grey colour it had always been.  
  
But his left eye . . .  
  
Draco gasped loudly.  
  
Instead of the same silver-grey colour that his right eye was, Draco's left eye was now almost completely blood-red. The pupil was the reddest, and the rest of his eye looked really, really bloodshot.  
  
Seeing this, Draco started to feel angry. Angry at his father. What the fucking hell did the man DO to his eye? It was so red! Just so fucking red! Why did the drunk bastard have to smash that fucking lamp against his face???  
  
And then, where what his left eye saw had been a little blurry, it went -- very-- blurry. Kind of like when mist clouded up on a window . . . only it was Draco's left eye.  
  
"Krystal is sorry, Master Draco," came Krystal's squeaky voice from the doorway of the bathroom.  
  
Draco didn't turn around.  
  
"But Krystal is thinking that when Master Draco is getting angry, Master Draco's eye will go very blurry and Master Draco will not be able to see properly with his eye, but only when he is getting angry," Krystal said quietly.  
  
Draco was just about to ask how the fuck he was supposed to live like that, but he was cut off by his father, who had come into the bathroom, unnoticed.  
  
"Well, boy? Did the house-elf stop you crying like a baby?" his father's voice cut through him like a knife. He did this, Draco thought, looking at his red eye. His anger suddenly melted away and Draco suddenly feared his father so much more. He slowly turned around . . .  
  
"In the name of the Dark Lord, what the hell happened to your eye?" Lucius yelled.  
  
So when Draco had arrived for his sixth year at Hogwarts, he arrived there with a contact on his left eye (his father hadn't used a spell and forbade Draco to because he told him that that was his punishment for getting two OWLs), and a new fear of his father.  
  
But whenever Potter and his friends tried to start a fight, or insulted him . . . Draco just walked off. Just ignored them and walked off. Because of this, he started to lose all his friends. Crabbe and Goyle stopped following him, and Pansy Parkinson stopped simpering over him and moved on to worshipping Adam Nott, a Slytherin in the same year as Draco, who he had never talked to, with golden-blonde hair and hazel eyes and the intelligence of a pickle.  
  
In his sixth year Draco had made friends with Blaise Zabini - he had known the boy before, yes, but he had never talked to him. Draco learned to respect him for his intelligence and his mysterious-ness. But Blaise didn't know about Draco's problem, and Draco was too proud to ask for help.  
  
So that was the reason why he was so scared of people finding out that he was dyslexic. He was afraid that they'd react like his father did, although his father was only mad because he got just two OWLs. But it was the same thing, really. If anyone ever found out, they'd call him . . . things. Lots of things. Like 'thick'.  
  
But it was the truth, he was; he was even thicker than Crabbe and Goyle. At least they could --write--.  
  
Anyway, if anyone ever found out they would call him thick, say that all his 'good marks' (he was still a prefect and he was to share his room with Harry Potter this year) were fake, make fun of him, tell him that his father was right to almost blind him . . .  
  
They would do all of that.  
  
In his sixth year, when Potter and Weasley found out that he only got two OWLs, they had teased him mercilessly. He supposed that he deserved it, for all that he had done to them, but some of the comments still stung. In fact, sometimes, he was so paranoid that Potter and Weasley knew that he was dyslexic and were out to get him that he thought that every single shadow at night was Potter, ready to hex him for being thick, thought that every single creak was Weasley trying to get into his room and put the Cruciatus curse on him in his sleep for being so defenceless . . .  
  
But they didn't know. No one knew.  
  
And he prayed to the Gods that nobody ever found out.  
  
~ To Be Continued . . . ~ 


End file.
